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Social, economic, and environmental systems in arid regions are vulnerable to disruptions in water supplies that are likely to accompany future climate changes. With a particular focus on the Rio Grande in New Mexico, this paper uses a hydro-economic model to integrate plausible changes in population and climate over the coming 70 yr. Specifically, projections of regional population growth are combined with alternative climate scenarios in order to simulate changes in streamflows, water supplies, and water demands within a framework that economizes water use. The study uses 3 climate change scenarios across 2 distinct future time periods to model runoff, water supply, and water demand changes, and estimate the economic and water-use consequences. Specifically, temperature and precipitation scenarios were generated using results from 3 general circulation models (GCMs), namely, HadCM3 (Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and
Hurd et al. (Wed,) studied this question.